FORA.tv Speaker - Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu

Biography

Dr. AshiteyTrebi-Ollennu, FIET, FRAeS, SMIEE,PMP, FGA, is the Product Delivery Manager, for the InSight Mars Mission Instrument Deployment System, Instrument Deployment System operations Team Chief and a technical group lead in the Robotic Manipulation & Sampling group at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where he has been since 1999. He was born in Accra, Ghana. He received his Ph.D. degree in control systems from Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, United Kingdom in 1996 and B.Eng. (Hons) from Queen Mary College, University of London, United Kingdom in 1991. He was a research scholar at Institute of Complex Engineered Systems, Carnegie Mellon University from 1997 to 1999. Dr. Trebi-Ollennu received the 2008 NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal for his contributions to the Mars Exploration Rover mission, 2007 Outstanding Engineer Award from IEEE Region 6, 2007 Sir Monty Finniston Achievement Medal from Institution of Engineering and Technology, U.K., 2010 Specialist Silver Award from the Royal Aeronautical Society, U.K. and The 21st Century Trailblazer Award in Systems Engineering from the U.S.A. National Society of Black Engineers, at the 2012 NSBE Aerospace Systems Conference. Dr. Trebi-Ollennu is a recipient of over a dozen NASA Group Achievement Awards. Dr. Trebi-Ollennu is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, U. K., and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, U.K. Senior Member IEEE RAS and IEEE SMC. Dr. Trebi-Ollennu is also a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has severed as a Guest Editor of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Magazine, Special Issue on Mars Exploration Rovers (June 2006). Dr. Trebi-Ollennu has been on PhD committees at the Robotic Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh USA. Dr Trebi-Ollennu is the founder of the Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation (GRAF) that won the prestigious Google RISE Award 2013.